Why generative AI will take developer productivity to new heights
The age of opportunity is here for IT teams. The emergence of new tools and technologies is enabling businesses to reach higher levels of innovation and efficiency. This, in turn, is empowering development teams to drive increased business value and competitive differentiation.
However, significant challenges remain: a shortage of skilled developers, pressure to reduce development costs and an increased need to be agile. These disruptions slow digital execution and prevent developer productivity.
GenAI is transforming development
Not all disruptions are bad. One emerging force that’s having a distinctly positive effect on development teams is generative AI (GenAI). This burgeoning technology has rapidly become one of the most exciting and transformative in our lifetimes.
When applied under the lens of low-code and the application development lifecycle—from ideation and creation to testing and deployment—GenAI has the potential to become a revolutionary tool.
In fact, Gartner® predicts that by 2025, 80% of app development will make use of GenAI code generation with developers acting as validators and orchestrators of back-end and front-end components and integrations.1
GenAI is poised to fill a significant gap in the supply-demand mismatch for more applications. IDC projects that 750 million cloud-native applications will be created globally by 2025 as businesses work toward building these sustainable digital value engines.2 Yet finding developers to fill open roles remains a challenge, according to App Developer Magazine.
The need for more digital capabilities and solutions at the enterprise level is clearly outpacing developer availability, making GenAI’s arrival extremely timely. By helping drastically reduce workflow time and accelerate the coding process, GenAI can elevate developers’ productivity and efficiency.
In some cases, applications can be built in a matter of hours by simply describing your desired application actions with natural language. Now that’s revolutionary.
GenAI benefits both developers and non-developers
GenAI empowers developers with a redefined approach to low-code development. It also helps non-developers, including platform owners, admins, and those writing scripts and configuring out-of-the box products. Specifically, it helps:
- Developers write business rules and logic validation scripts, as well as create flows and build schemas
- Platform owners/admins write platform automation scripts and make system change/update scripts and permissions
- Process analysts create flows and business processes, while also writing temporary placeholders for business stakeholders to more easily understand complicated code
One of the earliest applications of GenAI is its code generation capability, which helps teams convert text written in plain, natural language into intelligent code suggestions or even into finished code. Flow generation can also propose code and scripting examples while improving flow by presenting alternative choices.
Perhaps most impressively, GenAI can recommend which approach (script or flow) works best for specific development scenarios, accelerating timelines even further.
4 steps to apply GenAI to low-code development
Despite the perceived complexity of GenAI, it’s relatively straightforward to apply the technology across low-development processes. Possessing the right platform for streamlined implementation is key, along with these steps:
1. Select and empower the right users
Companies must examine their existing developer population and determine which people can benefit from using GenAI, not forgetting non-developer cohorts such as platform admins and process analysts.
GenAI can benefit a wide range of skill levels and team sizes, from hundreds of users to a single developer working for a startup. Therefore, it’s vital to identify which areas of the business will benefit from which GenAI capabilities.
2. Identify the right use cases
Whether you’re building custom applications from scratch or configuring out-of-the-box apps, GenAI can be applied to an array of use cases. Remember, though, success is less about identifying which programming languages GenAI supports and more about pinpointing which capabilities and people it empowers.
Code generation, flow generation and script versus flow recommendations are among the technologies’ most powerful capabilities. However, moving forward, GenAI will be applied to increasingly advanced and sophisticated use cases, such as process generation and process automation design.
3. Perfect code-generation prompts
GenAI models rely on human input, meaning their results are only as strong as the prompts they’re given. Make sure all prompts are clear, specific and concise—and that they indicate the expected outcome and context.
Additionally, include all necessary details, such as task requirements, specific APIs, and potential constraints.
4. Track progress and results
As with any new tool or technology, it’s critical to regularly document and measure progress to ensure success.
If GenAI isn’t helping you produce better-quality code or build applications faster—freeing your developers to focus on more complex tasks—then you need to revisit the previous steps to ensure you’re applying GenAI in the right places and to the right people.
The future of app development is AI-powered
GenAI is set to revolutionise the ways enterprises and IT teams build applications. It can empower coding cohorts and a wide development community within an organisation—without the need for extensive coding expertise.
Ultimately, this can pave the way for a more inclusive and democratised development process, enhancing low-code scenarios, workflow efficiency and innovation opportunities across the enterprise.
Ready to put GenAI to work? Explore how you can empower your entire organisation with GenAI use cases.
1 Gartner, “Emerging Tech: Generative AI Code Assistants Are Becoming Essential to Developer Experience”, 11 May 2023
2 IDC Press Release, IDC Updates Its Future of Digital Innovation Framework; Highlights Role of Technology Suppliers in Helping Businesses Build Value Engines for Sustainable Digital Innovation, #US49760222, 12 October 2022
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